A Hebrew billboard near Larnaca airport, a new pro-Israel caucus in Nicosia and a surge of Israeli buyers have turned a 40-minute flight into a Cypriot political question — two days before Israel votes.
Published 25 October 2026 · 06:01 GMT
A Hebrew billboard near Larnaca airport, a new pro-Israel caucus in Nicosia and a surge of Israeli buyers have turned a 40-minute flight into a Cypriot political question — two days before Israel votes. This summer, a Hebrew election billboard near Larnaca airport urged Israelis to fly home and vote for former army chief Gadi Eisenkot in Israel's 27 October election — described by a Cypriot activist as believed to be the first time a foreign politician had campaigned on billboards in Cyprus.
In the summer of 2026 a Hebrew-language election poster for Gadi Eisenkot appeared near Larnaca airport ahead of Israel's 27 October vote; six Cypriot MPs from DISY, DIKO and ELAM formed an Israel Allies Foundation caucus in mid-October; and Israeli tourism, property buying and investment in Cyprus have all risen sharply since 2022, according to Cypriot official data cited across Cypriot, Israeli and international reporting.
Whether the Israeli presence amounts to a community putting down roots, a market responding to proximity and safety, or a political foothold. Cypriot critics, led by AKEL, speak of gated enclaves and a compromised government; Israel's former ambassador to Cyprus said the criticism singles out the Jewish community; AKEL insists its objection is to government policy, not to Jewish identity.
How many Israelis actually live in Cyprus, since purchases made through Cypriot companies are not recorded by buyer nationality and there is no official count of gated communities; and even the caucus's exact launch date is reported differently, with Cyprus Inform dating the formal launch to Wednesday 14 October and Al Jazeera, citing The Jerusalem Post, reporting 20 October.
This summer, on a road near Larnaca airport, holidaymakers were greeted by a billboard in Hebrew: "Israelis, enjoy! Now come back and win!" It was an election poster for Israel's 27 October vote, featuring Gadi Eisenkot, the former army chief who leads the opposition Yashar party and is now Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's main challenger. TV presenter and pro-Palestine activist Melanie Steliou told Al Jazeera it was believed to be the first time a foreign politician had campaigned on billboards in Cyprus. Her reading was blunt: Israeli politicians, she said, see Cyprus as "just another district of Israel". Israel is 40 minutes away by plane, Steliou noted, so Israelis in Cyprus "can pop over, vote, and come back within the day" — and because Israel does not allow most citizens living abroad to vote outside the country, campaigns court exactly those voters. Two days before the vote, that billboard has become the emblem of a much larger Cypriot argument about money, land and political influence.
Start with movement. Israelis made nearly 600,000 trips to Cyprus last year, more than double the 2022 figure, according to Cyprus Statistical Service (CYSTAT) figures cited by Al Jazeera; Ynet, drawing on Cyprus tourism data, puts the 2025 figure at about 590,000, making Israel the island's second-largest tourism market after the United Kingdom, up roughly 38 percent on 2024. Then property. In the 12 months to September 2025, Israelis made 850 purchases in Larnaca district alone, more than any other foreign nationality, according to Interior Ministry data, and Land Registry figures presented to parliament record 3,851 Israeli-linked transfers between 2021 and 2024 in Larnaca, Paphos and Limassol. Then capital: investment from Israel rose more than sixfold between 2017 and 2024 to 5.1 billion euros, according to the Central Bank of Cyprus. And then institutions: a flagship Jewish school for up to 1,500 pupils, funded by the Yael Foundation, is planned at Polemidia near Limassol for 2027, and the Hadassah hospital group opened its first European medical centre in Limassol in July. It is a pattern across tourism, housing, capital, health and education.
For all the numbers, the most basic question — how many Israelis live in Cyprus? — has no reliable answer. The last census, in 2021, recorded slightly more than 1,000 Israelis living in or registered in Cyprus. Israel's embassy in Nicosia estimates that 15,000 to 20,000 now consider the island home, according to the Cypriot outlet Philenews, and Israeli media put the number of Israeli families living permanently on the island at more than 3,000, with perhaps 20,000 Israelis owning property there without living there year-round. The gap is structural: no official count of gated communities exists, and buyer nationalities are not recorded for purchases made through Cypriot companies. The same fog surrounds the most contested case. In western Cyprus, businessman Uriel Kertesz, who holds Hungarian and Israeli citizenship, bought an estimated 70 to 80 percent of the abandoned village of Trozena and its farmland, in a protected area. Politis reported that he paid double or triple market value and pressed ahead without the needed permits — claims Al Jazeera says it cannot independently confirm. Even the caucus carries a date dispute: Cyprus Inform dates its formal launch to Wednesday 14 October, while Al Jazeera, citing The Jerusalem Post, reports 20 October.
Cyprus has absorbed waves of foreign buyers before. Limassol was once nicknamed "Limassolgrad" for its Russian community; British retirees, Russian capital and golden-passport buyers have all invested since independence in 1960, and the island has been divided since Türkiye's 1974 invasion, which followed a coup backed by Athens. Theodosis Pipis, a historian and analyst with the think tank KEDISA, told Al Jazeera that Russian investment in the early 2010s brought big buildings and companies, "but you never really saw a huge influx of buying houses, building schools, creating communities". Israeli investment, by contrast, is creating "a sense of community for the future". Nasia Hadjigeorgiou, of the University of Central Lancashire in Cyprus, called the Israeli push "a more sudden development" than British or Lebanese buying. The timing sharpens the politics: Nicosia keeps giving Israel's government, in Hadjigeorgiou's words, "a lot of cover and a lot of support" while Israel's war in Gaza has filled Cypriot walls with pro-Palestine murals. For a population that describes itself as displaced from its own homes, the sight of another community buying land at scale carries a particular weight — and it is that weight, more than any single purchase, that has turned a property story into a sovereignty story. Readers can also see our earlier reporting on Israel-Greece energy cooperation and on the Aphrodite gas field.
The Cypriot debate is confused because three different things are happening simultaneously, and each has a different innocent explanation. First, a market story: Cyprus is close, safe, English-friendly and inside the European Union, and Israeli companies have moved operations there to work more easily with EU countries. Second, a community story: a population that visits in huge numbers begins to want schools, clinics and kosher restaurants, and the Yael Foundation school and the Hadassah centre are the institutional form of that logic. Third, a political story: a government in Nicosia that has deepened defence and energy cooperation with Israel now hosts a parliamentary caucus spanning DISY, DIKO and ELAM. None of these three, on its own, is extraordinary. Together, they create something Cyprus has not regulated: a foreign presence that is simultaneously a tourism market, a property class, a community with its own institutions and a parliamentary lobby. The policy vacuum is visible in the school case: in February 2025 no application had been submitted, and by October that year it was still being finalised. A state that cannot say who applied for what, when, cannot reassure anyone.
First, the housing market. In Larnaca and Limassol, concentrated buying pushes prices and, residents say, pushes locals out — the classic second-home effect, sharpened because some developments are described as gated communities "almost inaccessible to anyone other than Israeli nationals". Hadjigeorgiou cautions that there is "likely some exaggeration in relation to some of the examples", but adds that some are "very clearly gated communities" — and, as a lawyer, that a development where only Israelis can buy would be unconstitutional under Cyprus's constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights. Second, the politics of speech. In August 2025, after Israel's Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli complained to Cypriot ministers, the Interior Ministry ordered municipalities to remove what it called hate-inciting graffiti; in Limassol, crews removed it, sometimes before 6 a.m., and a mayor who tried to protect it as political expression was overruled. Third, the precedent. Other EU states, including Spain, have restricted land sales to non-EU nationals; Cyprus now faces parliamentary initiatives to limit uncontrolled land sales, and local chambers discuss a leasehold model under which land rights would revert after 50 to 70 years.
The immediate event is Israel's election on Tuesday 27 October, in which Eisenkot's Yashar party leads most polls with a projected 20 to 23 of the 120 Knesset seats, ahead of Netanyahu's Likud, while neither bloc is on course for the 61 seats needed to govern. The Cypriot billboard will come down either way. What will not disappear is the parliamentary caucus, whose six members — DIKO's Chrysis Pantelides and Andreas Apostolou, DISY's Giorgos Karoullas and Charalambos Petrides, and ELAM's Sotiris Ioannou and Marios Pelekanos — now form a standing pro-Israel bloc inside the House of Representatives, alongside a separate Transatlantic Friends of Israel chapter. AKEL has demanded transparency over the caucus's funding and use of parliamentary facilities, and accused the government of President Nikos Christodoulides of undermining Cyprus's credibility on international law. Watch three things next: whether parliament debates land-sale limits or a leasehold model; whether the Polemidia school application is resolved, and on what terms; and whether the next CYSTAT release confirms the August pattern of Israeli arrivals at roughly a quarter of the total. If it does, the argument will be about what Cyprus intends to do about it — long after the last poster comes down. See also our coverage of Europe's Gaza marches.
The Western lens: a parliament, a lobby and a question of sovereignty Western and Cypriot reporting has chased the institutional thread hardest: who formed the caucus, who funds it, and what it means for a parliament to host a foreign-policy lobby. Cyprus Inform names all six MPs and records AKEL's charge that the initiative turns parliament into a platform for a foreign state, while noting that the foundation operates caucuses in 68 parliaments. The Western lens treats the property numbers as background and the caucus as the story — because a lobby, unlike a holiday home, votes.
The Eastern lens: the market, measured in arrivals and euros Reporting from Israel and India reads the episode as a market story first. Ynet counts the tourists — about 590,000 Israelis in 2025, one in eight visitors, the second-largest market after Britain — and explains the surge with proximity, price and a record year for Israeli outbound travel. The Indian Express, profiling Eisenkot ahead of Tuesday's vote, supplies the political frame: a former chief of staff leading the polls against Netanyahu but short of a governing majority.
The Southern lens: a displaced people watches another community arrive Al Jazeera, reporting from Cyprus itself, and TRT World, from Türkiye, frame the story inside displacement and the war in Gaza. Al Jazeera's Cypriot interviewees — an artist who says his "heart sinks" at large groups of Israeli men who have served in the military, a potter who calls his politicians "compromised" — speak as people who describe their own displacement in 1974 and see, in the new buying, an echo they cannot ignore. TRT World adds the Turkish-Cypriot vantage point: expanding military cooperation between Israel, Greece and the Greek Cypriot administration.
Because Israel does not allow most citizens living abroad to vote outside the country, campaigns court Israelis who can fly home on polling day. Cyprus is 40 minutes away by plane, so a Hebrew billboard near Larnaca airport urging Israelis to return and vote for Gadi Eisenkot reached exactly that audience ahead of the 27 October election.
Israelis made nearly 600,000 trips to Cyprus last year, more than double the 2022 figure, and Ynet reports about 590,000 visitors in 2025, making Israel the second-largest tourism market after Britain. How many live there is unclear: the 2021 census recorded just over 1,000 Israelis, while Israel's embassy estimates 15,000 to 20,000 now consider the island home.
It is a parliamentary group formed in mid-October 2026 by six MPs from DISY, DIKO and ELAM, affiliated with the Israel Allies Foundation, an advocacy organisation that says it operates caucuses in 68 parliaments. AKEL condemned the move as unprecedented and provocative, and has demanded transparency over its funding and use of parliamentary facilities.
Politicians, estate agents and academics in Cyprus use the phrase for clusters of Israeli-owned properties they describe as closed off from the wider community, and StockWatch reports Israeli companies bought most of the coastline between Livadia and Pyla. But there is no official count, buyer nationalities are not recorded for purchases through Cypriot companies, and one Cypriot academic says some examples are likely exaggerated.
